GoodGeist
A podcast on sustainability, hosted by Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Looking at sustainability issues, communications, and featuring global guests from a wide variety of sectors such as business, NGOs and government.
GoodGeist
A Future You Desire, with Michael Adler
Have you ever paused to consider how the words we use can shape the battle against climate change? Michael Adler, CEO of Tipping Points, joins us in this episode to talk about his extraordinary journey from anti-nuclear advocate to leading a sustainability-focused communication agency, a long-standing member of the Do Not Smile Network.
Michael talks about the power of language, advocating for a change in discourse from 'climate protection' to 'human protection' – a reframing that captures the urgent impact on our species and the intricate web of life that sustains us. We also talk about polarisation, urban planning, and how to make action happen locally, and globally.
Follow GoodGeist for more episodes on sustainability, communications and how creativity can help make the world a better place.
Good Geist, a podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Özler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
Speaker 2:Hello, hello everyone, you are listening to Good Guys, the message on sustainability which is brought to you by the DNS Network, the global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. This is Damla from Mira Agency Istanbul.
Speaker 3:And this is Steve from Creative Concern in Manchester. So this podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they're communicated and what creativity can do to make positive change happen.
Speaker 2:So in this episode, I'm very, very excited because we once again are hosting a brilliant agency from the DNS network. We are going to talk to Michael Adler, the CEO of Tipping Points from Germany. To talk to Michael Adler, the CEO of Tipping Points from Germany Michael is a thinker, doer and, most importantly, a visionary, a devoted climate advocate, bringing people around the world to tackle the climate change.
Speaker 3:So Tipping Points' motto is impact, impact, impact and Michael's motto is sustainability requires communication. Penny dropping there, michael, and that's why both his agency and himself have managed numerous brilliant campaigns, and he gives keynote speeches, makes even political change happen and has recently published a book. Climate Protection is Human Protection. I hope we got the translation on that right, michael. Thanks for talking to Dan and myself.
Speaker 4:Thank you to you both to be my hosts here. I'm very happy to be here.
Speaker 2:Michael, it's great to have you with us today. Let's start with your story. How did sustainability become your core passion?
Speaker 4:Well, since I'm a bit older already, it really started with a nuclear power plant. In my neighborhood in the southwest of Germany was one of the first nuclear power plants in Germany Philipsburg. It's gone already now, because Germany went out of nuclear power and I really celebrated the breakdown of the cooling tower of this nuclear power plant. I was, let's say, 15 or 16 when we started to oppose against that and so I was part of this. Atomkraft, nein Danke, atomkraft, no Thanks, movement at the beginning. So quite early in my life, sustainability and the questions, what is good energy, what is good industry, what is good, well, nature, caring for the planet, was in my life.
Speaker 3:Amazing and as a lesson in environmental communication, michael, I remember the bumper sticker for cars that the anti-nuclear campaign had Nijndanka, with a sort of red glowing star thing yes, it was really iconic it was like a really
Speaker 4:good example of yeah great communication well it, it was nine dunker, it was no thanks. Uh I I would turn in the meantime to say more yes to things. That's part of my recent philosophy.
Speaker 3:Very good. So I've got a question for you, Michael. I think Tipping Points is unique amongst our agencies in that it sits at this intersection of really strong technical knowledge and what used to be an NGO becoming a communications agency and fusing those together really powerfully. So tell us about that approach a little bit.
Speaker 4:Well, Pipping Points was an agency from the beginning. My vita is going back to an NGO. I was working for several years two decades more or less for an NGO which deals with sustainable mobility, and I was chief editor of the member magazine called Fair Care Fair Transport. It's a German-English word, and so my mindset was probably very much influenced by NGO thinking. But I thought we are preaching too much to the priests and we have to find a broader audience for a real change, Because you need majorities in democracy.
Speaker 4:You need 50% plus X to change things 50 plus x to change things and the usual ngos are, let's say, they have a group of three percent, four, maybe five in in our societies who are really committed to them, and I, I thought we have to address really much more people, and so I found Tipping Points in 2012 to use less words and reach more people. That was my aim at the beginning and it worked sometimes.
Speaker 2:Amazing. What I find very, very interesting in this story is how you never stopped being a thinker and even though now you are an advertising and communication person, you still are a visionary and you still are working on the theory of things. And what I have in my hand is your latest book. I love it. I will not try to pronounce its German name, but I will just say the English name. Climate protection is human protection, and in this book you especially focus on climate communications and say that the way we debate the issue is problematic. And on numerous other occasions you also point out the polarization rising in our societies all around the world not only in German society, but all around the world, and especially in Europe, the Middle East, everywhere and then you say that this threat to our future well-being is really really much bigger with this polarized society. So where do you think we shall cut this Gordian snot?
Speaker 4:Well, it's a hundred million dollar question. So maybe I start with the idea of the book that we use some. Often we use the wrong words to express what we want to say. Start with the word climate protection. The climate needs no protection. Climate is there and we as human beings influence the climate. That's definitely true, and we're still talking about climate protection is doing that. Climate protection forces us to do something like that. Climate needs no protection. We, as human beings, need protection, and the actor who is threatening us are we ourselves. So we need human protection, or even, to make it broader, we need the protection of life on this planet, because we are not influencing just our species, but also the whole biodiversity system, and that's what it's all about. So that's the clue in the title of the book.
Speaker 4:If we're talking about climate crisis and climate heating, I'm just calling it climate heating in the meantime, not climate warming anymore, because warm is comfortable. Heat is not comfortable, and if you, if you, um, if you call back in your mind the latest summers uh, you experienced one with wildfires in turkey you know the difference between warm and heat. And so there is. We need a certain um, catastrophic vocabulary to describe the issue and the size of the problem, and, on the other hand, we need a clear language and clear wording to address who is threatening the balance of the planet. Who has to do something? And it's us. We have to do something, something, and it's us we have to do something. And something, something different than we acted during the last hundred years in a in a in a truly neoliberal, capitalist, capitalist, industrial world. And so, in this context, we are the discussion about how much shall we do to protect ourselves for against the, the threatening of, of the climate heating?
Speaker 4:Um, we are, we are getting in into a splitting of the societies and the political discussion, and on the one hand, you have the right wing and the political discussion, and on the one hand, you have the right wing and the fascist and the conservative political group who says, well, we go on like we did and we have to grow our economies and we have to save and protect our car industry in Germany and we have to protect the fossil engines in our car industry.
Speaker 4:And on the other side, you have the Green Party in Germany and we have to protect the fossil engines in our car industry. And on the other side, you have the Green Party in Germany and social democrats and activists who say well, we have to do everything totally differently. And this splitting is getting harder and much more aggressive during the last five or six or seven years, what I realize, and you have the example of USA with Trumpism and the Democrats. You have all this splitting of societies and political debates in all over Europe, in all over Europe, and I think it's crucial that we talk in a constructive and in a positive manner about the change we need. I call it desirable futures in my book, and I took the English expression because the German expression is not so strong as desirable, because the German expression is not so strong as desirable, and I think one road to a better future, to a more cooperative society and a more cooperative political scenery is to talk about what you want to have in the future what you are.
Speaker 4:Because of that, I said I want to have in the future what you have, what you, what you are. Because of that, I said I want to say more yes than no. Uh, what is this the the scenario I want to live in?
Speaker 3:yeah, so, and my children too. So, michael, I really want to get into that thought, thinking around what the conversation looks like and how we navigate that conversation, and I imagine in my head a kind of matrix where we've got um saying yes to things on one side, um saying no to things on the other side, and we want to steer towards the positive. Um. We want to realize the urgency of the need to protect ourselves against our very own actions and and how serious situation is. There is some fear in that um, but we also want to um look at solutions and give people a sense of agency, and and somehow this is so tricky for us as communicators, isn't it? We need to somehow navigate through this space and and do you ever and this might be really tricky question do you ever think, oh, for goodness sake, we just need to rip the whole thing up and start again? It's impossible to have this conversation when we still have a system that just completely makes us move towards destruction.
Speaker 4:Well, yes, of course, sometimes you're…. The last year was a difficult year 2023, for me in special because I got the impression everything is front wind and you got no tailwind at all and every decision. In Germany, we have a federal government with one part the climate and economy part in hand of the Green Party, and there was a lot of hope that things are going on in the right direction, and then it turned out that they couldn't really realize as much as should be possible. And we had this, of course, as I described before, this right-wing movement which is denying any climate change, climate heating induced by human action. So I knew this frustration point very well, and on the backside of my book is a quote by Steve DeShazer, an American psychologist, who said well, if you talk about problems, you get problems. If you talk about solutions, you get solutions, and I can only agree.
Speaker 4:I was working on that book with several parts and I had this psychological part how is human behavior structured and why do people do that and not do that? The traps of climate communication to be too scientific, to be too much on dystopia and doom and then I asked myself what could be a structure and I found it in the constructive journalism, which is, I think, an international idea, and I know a german neuroscientist who founded a digital magazine called perspective daily, and they work along these guidelines of constructive journalism and it's not only about who has done what, when and where, but it's also asked asking what for? Did he do that or she, and what have we to do next? And I think this is a guideline, a roadmap on which I walk, try to walk also with my clients, not only to put a spotlight on the problems and what has to be changed and what is maybe uncomfortable in this change, but also to get a glimpse on not only a glimpse, but to really paint the picture, a colorful picture of where you want to go. And to take one example out of our recent work, we had the job to talk about superblocks, super ERs, like in Barcelona.
Speaker 4:In my hometown, bonn, we have a green mayor there now and she said well, I want to have super blocks within three years, which is incredibly fast for german administration. And we, uh, we had a convention with, with her, the lord mayor and, uh, three, um well, heads of department sports, sports, social, climate, environment, everything, so the whole leading body of the city administration, and we started with the backcasting and said well, what do you imagine these quarters will be in 2027, when they are realized, 2027 when they are realized? And they, they, they painted a picture of a neighborhood where people caring for each other, where you have more green, more shadow in the summer, more cooling, more water, more social life, more cultural life in the streets. And they were not talking about transport or traffic anymore.
Speaker 4:So the the the initial issue, which is really often the point where the discussion and the splitting starts with you take away five parking spaces. This is not possible. Or you want to narrow this road for car traffic for the favor of bicycle or public transport. This is not possible. And so we started with the idea what would be better then if we realize such a super block, super ER? And this is, I think, where we should go more, where we should go more.
Speaker 2:So, michael, listening to what you said and combining it with my own experience with you and Tipping Points, but also a lot of German friends, so there's a way of doing things and that's the German way and it's very methodological, very strict and very, very much result oriented all the time. But when we look at the results you get on the climate change and maybe climate heat, as you put it, maybe this is just a maybe you do get those results on the local level, but climate change is not only a local matter, it's a global matter level. But climate change is not only a local matter, it's a global matter. So whatever you do there in your neighborhood or in your home or in your country, it doesn't have the big effect to what's going on. Really, like the Paris Agreement, it's kind of null and void now. So how do you think we can bring different communities and different countries together to work on a collaborative way of tackling this crisis?
Speaker 4:well, uh, german, germans still have a very good image abroad, but we are not that sensible. Sensible is the right word. Sensible, as you always imagine. I think you had Helle Sohold in one of the last podcasts, and I'm a real fan of Jan Gehl. I had this privilege to talk to him for more than two hours in his private home and he said well, michael, people always tell us this is different here. This is New York. You can't do in New York what you did in Copenhagen. And he said well, michael, people are the same everywhere, and this is an idea I realized even with my research for my book.
Speaker 4:I realized more and more that this is true, and so I think it's easier to get into a constructive discussion in a part of a city or a part of a village. Even a big city like Manchester Istanbul anyway, it's a huge city or Berlin or Bonn is too big to address all people in the same manner. So, if it comes to communication, communication, you have to be understood. The commit, the, the message you, you, transport, has to be relevant for the target group and it, if it's ideal, it connects with your values and your deeper commitment, and so every successful communication, I think, has to be local or regional, but it could follow the same milestones and the same framework, and there are some rules that people don't want to act against their values, and values are very strong and long-term.
Speaker 4:So if you want to address, let's say, in the Midwest of US people to change their transport behavior with their pickups, it's hard work to do because the pickup is part of their value system, and so you have to offer something which is in their value scale that they can really do it. So I think any sustainable communication has to be local to get really powerful. And in the addition of all this local or regional communications, uh we come. We come to a to a global change, and it's the question of footprint and handprint, of course, too. Uh, I think the the local or regional communication is something in between. So you're not just doing your own stuff, your individual stuff, but you don't get well too strong burden to change the whole world, because this is too much for an individual or for a company, even like Tipping Points.
Speaker 3:Ah, that's Michael. I have a question on that because, um you, your motivation is to change the world.
Speaker 3:I know that so even though, you're working locally and making it local. What's going on in your mind is part of a global revolution, and so I've got a question for you on that, because you and your colleagues at tipping Points put a high level of personal advocacy into your projects and I think you blur the lines between communications expert and consultant and activist. So how blurred are those lines for you? Are you just an activist that's good at communicating?
Speaker 4:Well, if you ask me personally and private, I would say I'm sort of an activist. But well, I'm not cluing myself on a road service surface and let me take away by police. But I have a deep idea that we have really to change a lot of things substantially and what we are doing is by far not enough. So I agree in the mindset with, let's say, fridays for Future or also all the scientists. We have got a lot of scientists in Germany who are upset about what we are not doing, about our not acting, and so this drives me to stay active, to stay confident, to stay really well, to be motivated, to stand up any Monday morning and go to work and say, well, let's do it.
Speaker 4:And this is the personal, the michael adler, uh, individual. But on the other hand, I, I took a decision, um, uh to um, to create a handprint, a special handprint, uh, with communication and with an agency, and there we have to uh well, to play along the rules of our clients. And that's what we are doing. And sometimes I'm not really glad with that because, uh, I miss, uh often I miss the courage to be more edgy, to be more provocating, to be more well, go further as a huge, a bigger step, which I think is needed. But, um, if they are not ready to do so, uh, you, you, you can't force the system to be quicker and faster than it really is. So I'm I'm I'm professional enough and I'm i'm'm old enough to realize what is possible, but to move this line always a bit further towards solution, that's my idea.
Speaker 3:We've all been there, michael, where we you know the odd project where you think this would be so much better without a client. But not that I'm saying that's all clients, just a very few occasionally. So, michael, just one very quick question before damla asks the final question, um, which is if you could choose this is like choosing between your children if you could choose a project, um, that you really love doing, that you're really proud of which, would it be A real project?
Speaker 4:that we did. Yeah, well, we did it. This is quite a few years ago and this was not local, it was for the Federal Ministry of Environment and the claim was together it's climate change and together it is climate protection. Sorry, this is a mess of English expressions. Now, together is climate protection, hashtag, ziek.
Speaker 4:And we made the first digital campaign for the environmental ministry. It was for the environmental ministry, it was for the summit, the COP in Lima, the one before Paris even and we had to address all these urban young people between 25, 35, who are really already on track, and to motivate them to do more. And we did some provocating spots with sex already on track and to motivate them to do more. And we did some provocating spots with sex and zombies and machos, and they were really thrilling and had one million, two million, three million views at that time, 2014,. And then 15 in the following campaign.
Speaker 4:And we did a few 10 or 15 lifestyle spots of people who are doing something different, who are living vegan, who have a strong fair fashion commitment of course, sustainable transport and and cargo bikes and things like that, but also, well, this kind of living. One was with I'm changing bread, a woman who made bread and changed bread against, let's say, hours of a lawyer. So even this question, what is labor worth? And we had a good good, really a very good combination of this addressing the big audience and addressing the, the scene, um, the um, the activist audience, and this mixture mixture works, worked very good and was great fun, uh to so. And we had great freedom to do things that were really provocating and edgy and this was really fun and well, I appreciate all this local campaigning that we are doing. At Cologne. We're doing the climate neutrality campaign at the moment and we do it with a zero. So the claim is zero future 2035. And it means zero emission future in 2035. And I also appreciate always these local campaigns we are doing.
Speaker 2:I'm going to mix and match all of these. I mean desirable future, zero emission future, desirable future is zero emission future, and goes on and on, but I have to ask the final question. So, final question, our network is ironically called, as you know, do not smile, because we need to make sustainability a subject that brings happiness into the world. So what object, place or person always make you smile?
Speaker 4:well, ironically, uh, all the members of do not smile always make me smile, and well, I had um, uh, in several keynotes during the last month. I quoted Pippi Langstrumpf I don't know if it's the same name in English this Astrid Lindgren girl, and she has, really, she has gorgeous quotes. She says, for example I use that often. Example, I use that often we have to do everything differently. This will definitely turn out well and this is always thrilling the people that she's saying well, we have to do all things differently and it will be very fine and well, of course, I'm always happy to see my children, my two girls, 23 and 25 years old, but still they make me smile in a different manner than they did it when they were small kids, but still a source of smiling for me too, but still a source of smiling for me too.
Speaker 3:Well, you can't catch it on the podcast, but we're all beaming, smiling away like the happiest people in the universe at all of that, michael. So it's been absolutely brilliant talking, as ever, to one of our DNS partners who we love very much and we've covered so much, including the amazing book that we should plug again because climate protection is human protection.
Speaker 4:We've done it again.
Speaker 3:So thanks so much, Michael Damla, over to you.
Speaker 2:So thanks to everyone who has listened to our Good Guys podcast, brought to you by the Do Not Smile network of agencies.
Speaker 3:And make sure you listen to future episodes, where we'll be talking to more amazing people about how we can work together to create a more sustainable future.
Speaker 1:So see you, damla, see you, michael see you thank you very much, see you good geist, a podcast series on sustainability hosted by damla ozler and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network.
